Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Archbishop of Dublin: don’t believe? Fine. Leave!A leaner, ‘meaner’ church in fighting trim? A discussion-starter: the archbishop seems to echo Pope Benedict – clean house and have church for those who mean it. With priests, nuns and professors, by all means. Drive out the malefactors (such as Modernists) among them. On the other hand, the church isn’t a perfectionistic cult. There are and nearly always have been (since Constantine?) lots of Bad Catholics (‘I don’t follow that stuff but expect the church to be the church’), which the church has always kept on a looooong leash and never turned away. It canonizes the saints as examples; the rest are given to God’s mercy.

When liberals do it, they call it serious discipleship and community. When conservatives do it, it gets called a purity cult.